TODAY AT SUBSTACK: If you’ve signed up for free emails at Substack, you will receive today’s feature story at your inbox: Six years ago we decided Christmas Day would be a good time to review what we knew about Shelly Miscavige, wife to Scientology leader David Miscavige, who vanished in 2005. We wondered if Shelly, kept hidden in a remote mountain compound, even knew what day it was. [What is this Substack thing, anyway?]
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Technology Cocktail
“We know that deposits of drugs and biochemical substances in the body can prevent or inhibit case gain. Thus, where a case has been in rough shape and/or had extensive repair before the Purification Rundown, it is possible he could receive limited gain at that time. He may be hung up in failed auditing actions or errors in the repair from that period. To simply continue to give him subjective auditing over such hang-ups could give him losses or limited benefit. But when he has eliminated the debilitating effects of drug residuals on the Purification Rundown and when Objective Processing has brought him into present time, in better control and in better communication with his environment, auditing repair and other actions can be effectively carried out with full realization and/or resurgence of case gain” — L. Ron Hubbard, 1980
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THE PROSECUTION OF DANNY MASTERSON
We first broke the news of the LAPD’s investigation of Scientology celebrity Danny Masterson on rape allegations in 2017, and we’ve been covering the story every step of the way since then. At this page we’ve collected our most important links as Danny faces a potential sentence of 45 years to life in prison. NOW WITH TRIAL INDEX.
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THE PODCAST: How many have you heard?
[1] Marc Headley [2] Claire Headley [3] Jeffrey Augustine [4] Bruce Hines [5] Sunny Pereira [6] Pete Griffiths [7] Geoff Levin [8] Patty Moher [9] Marc Headley [10] Jefferson Hawkins [11] Michelle ‘Emma’ Ryan [12] Paulette Cooper [13] Jesse Prince [14] Mark Bunker [15] Jon Atack [16] Mirriam Francis [17] Bruce Hines on MSH
— SPECIAL: The best TV show on Scientology you never got to see
[1] Phil Jones [2] Derek Bloch [3] Carol Nyburg [4] Katrina Reyes [5] Jamie DeWolf
— The first Danny Masterson trial and beyond
[18] Trial special with Chris Shelton [19] Trial week one [20] Marc Headley on the spy in the hallway [21] Trial week two [22] Trial week three [23] Trial week four [24] Leah Remini on LAPD Corruption [25] Mike Rinder 2022 Thanksgiving Special [26] Jane Doe 4 (Tricia Vessey), Part One [27] Jane Doe 4 (Tricia Vessey), Part Two [28] Claire Headley on the trial [29] Tory Christman [30] Bruce Hines on spying [31] Karen de la Carriere [32] Ron Miscavige on Shelly Miscavige [33] Karen de la Carriere on the L’s [34] Mark Bunker on Miscavige hiding [35] Mark Plummer [36] Mark Ebner [37] Karen Pressley [38] Steve Cannane [39] Fredrick Brennan [40] Clarissa Adams [41] Louise Shekter [42] John Sweeney [43] Tory Christman [44] Kate Bornstein [45] Christian Stolte [46] Mark Bunker [47] Jon Atack [48] Luke Y. Thompson [49] Mark Ebner [50] Bruce Hines [51] Spanky Taylor and Karen Pressley [51] Geoff and Robbie Levin [52] Sands Hall [53] Jonny Jacobsen [54] Sandy Holeman [55] Mark Bunker [56] Trish and Liz Conley [57] Trish Conley [58] Alex Barnes-Ross [59] Alex Barnes-Ross [60] Alex Barnes-Ross [61] Alex Barnes-Ross [62] Alex Barnes-Ross [63] Alex Barnes-Ross [64] Tory Christman [65] Tammy Synovec [66] Dennis Erlich [67] Alex Barnes-Ross [68] Valerie Ross [69] Kat in Austin [70] Mark Bunker [71] Phil Jones
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“1980 draws to a close and we enter 1981. I just wanted to say ‘hello.’ They say a man is known by the high quality of his friends. So I must be very well known. I think I am very fortunate to have such a friend as you. One owes a friend some accounting of himself. You may be wondering what I’ve been up to lately. Would you like to know? I am as well as can be expected for anyone several trillion years old. I’m not doing any motorcycling nor much driving. I miss the good old days of sailing around in the Apollo. Sitting on a mountain top looking at the distant sea is no substitute for being on it.” — L. Ron Hubbard, December 25, 1980
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“Thank you for all your presents. This Christmas I was completely out-created — I received very many more presents than I gave — and all very lovely ones. Our poor AOs, SHs, ships and bases did not receive many greetings from Flag this year. We were so concerned about them that we didn’t use the last Couriers to send them our last minute Christmas greetings. We did send cards earlier. We’ll have to make it up to them. AOUK and AOLA sent lovely big cards. AOSH DK sent presents. Their best present was greatly raised AOLA and ASHO stats. We heaved an awful sigh of relief over that. Three cheers for our upstat cooks, stewards and engineers and QMs who made the Christmas for the rest. That was a terrific dinner. What a nice day!” — The Commodore, December 25, 1969
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“Dear Mr. President, We Free Scientologists would like to contribute to the task of making America great again. The American writer L. Ron Hubbard developed an advanced technology to free the human mind from past experiences (trauma) so that the people can think freely and manage their lives successfully….Since then Scientology has experienced a hidden influence by intelligence agents, which finally took over Scientology in the 1970’s and put it under the control of the Deep State….As the intelligence community wanted a monopoly on these capabilities, they…put Scientology onto ‘Nixon’s enemy list’ and used the FBI-COINTELPRO to get rid of Hubbard — an Interpol-warrant was issued and he was imprisoned on 4 December 1972 without a chance of legal recourse….The original Scientology — as developed by L. Ron Hubbard — contains the methods and techniques to free the human spirit and mind from past experiences and constraints…We need all the resources available in each person to survive the global crisis which is ahead of us. We need many more people as clear and powerful as you, Mr. President, obviously are. Please help to rehabilitate the true potential of Scientology by ordering these agencies to stop infiltrating and get them out of our church….Thank you for being there and taking the responsibility of the post of US President. I love you too.”
1998: A transcript of the 20/20 news program was posted this week. Some highlights: “A young nurse named Hana Whitfield was one of Hubbard’s original Sea Org members. But instead of a magnanimous leader, Whitfield says she found in Hubbard a man increasingly prone to violent fits of temper. ‘He would
whine and cry out and, and express outrage at this or that or the other. Um, that would go on for days.’ According to Whitfield and others, Hubbard ordered rule-breakers confined to the ship’s chain locker for days at a time, including once a 4-year-old boy. On another occasion, witnesses say, Hubbard ordered wayward crew
members to be shoved overboard while the Apollo was docked in port. A Scientology magazine at the time depicted the ceremony. HANA WHITFIELD: ‘And those who were wailing or prostrate with fear were just grabbed and shoved over the ship into the harbor.’ MIKE RINDER: ‘There was a, like a, a little ceremony that grew up that
was like a, um,–I dunno, a joke, like a fun thing–‘OK, I commit my sins to the deep and I arise a better man!’ and he would jump off the side.’ TOM JARRIEL: After wandering the seas for more than five years, Hubbard finally came ashore here, in the sleepy retirement town of Clearwater, Florida. His goal was to establish an international mecca for Scientology. But according to many insiders, Hubbard was growing more and more vindictive toward those who stood in his way. He created what he called ‘The Rehabilitation Project Force.’ HANA WHITFIELD: ‘The people who are assigned to this camp are the worst of the worst. They’re the–they’re criminals in Scientology. I had two big men on either side of me who pretty much manhandled me into this room with no windows. And there was just a mattress on the floor. And I was locked in this room in the dark for however long it was. My crime was, in a Scientology sense, a very serious one. I was accused of having negative thoughts about Mr. Hubbard.’ Stacy Young says she was assigned to the RPF for disobeying an order to interrogate a fellow staff member. For part of the time, Young says she
was in a room on the seventh floor of the Los Angeles church. Her husband admits he stood by and did nothing to try to get her out. STACY YOUNG: ‘I didn’t see Vaughn for several months. I didn’t hear from him. I didn’t have any correspondence with him whatsoever. He did nothing to try and rescue me. (starts crying) I felt that my husband should have rescued me.’ VAUGHN YOUNG: ‘I didn’t take her out. I look back at that–that’s–I should have just picked her up. I should have just picked her up. And I should have just said, ‘If anybody touches me, you’re dead.’ You go through interrogations hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month. Breaking you down, breaking you down, breaking you down. Hubbard’s policy was, ‘As long as you’re with us, we’ll leave you alone. But if you speak out against us, we’re gonna dog you and ruin you and destroy you.’ And that’s exactly what they keep trying to do.’ FRANK OLIVER: ‘They can send private investigators out to your home or to your place of work, talk to your neighbors. They will illicitly try and obtain copies of your phone bills or credit rating. They will try and create problems for you at your place of employment. They will try and sue you. They’ll do everything they can try and do to stop you or to silence you.’ TOM JARRIEL: ‘How do you know?’ FRANK OLIVER: ‘I know because that’s what I used to do. I remember having to make the phone calls to all the phone numbers on someone’s phone bill to find out where they had called. These were enemies of the church. You shut them down. You find out what you can about them. You find their weak spot and you expose it. You make it so that they cannot survive or exist. You literally destroy them. I think that when we were chasing around Hana Whitfield that she was very intimidated by this, very disturbed by it. We followed this woman out of her house. We chased her around. We followed her to the airport.’ KIRSTIE ALLEY: ‘If you divorce a woman, and you, she gives me her version of why she left you, how valid do you think it is? If you’ve got a group standing over here of millions of Scientologists telling you daily the successes that they have, the wins that they have, the way they’re helping people, and you can examine the statistics for yourself, and you have a handful of dissatisfied customers over here, then that’s life. You’re never going to have a group of anyone without some dissatisfied customers. So say, fine, you don’t want to be a Scientologist, go.'”
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“Christmas in the U.S was invented by Ulysses S. Grant, Macy’s, and Sears & Roebuck after the Civil War to help jump-start the economy and pay for the war. The Pilgrims banned Christmas. Christmas in Europe was a drunken eat-till-you-puke orgy.”
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Full Court Press: What we’re watching at the Underground Bunker
Criminal prosecutions:
— Danny Masterson charged for raping three women: Found guilty on two counts on May 31, remanded to custody. Sentenced to 30 years to life on Sep 7, 2023. Appeal now fully briefed, waiting for 2nd Appellate District court to set a hearing date. Masterson has also submitted a habeas corpus petition.
— ‘Lafayette Ronald Hubbard’ (a/k/a Justin Craig), aggravated assault, plus drug charges: Grand jury indictments include charges from an assault while in custody. Pleaded guilty on Nov 10 to a 17-year prison sentence (eligible for parole in two to three more years). Awaiting transfer to state prison.
— Aaron Matthes charged for SA of child under 12 years old: OT Scientologist facing multiple mandatory life sentences currently in Pinellas County Jail. Next pretrial court hearing set for Dec 16.
Civil litigation:
— Leah Remini v. Scientology, alleging ‘Fair Game’ harassment and defamation: Some defamation claims were removed by Judge Hammock. Judge Hammock’s ruling is on appeal. Leah’s respondent’s brief is due January 12.
— Baxter, Baxter, and Paris v. Scientology, alleging labor trafficking: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’
— Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’ 15 days of arbitration completed, Val waiting for further word from the IJC.
— Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson. Judge Upindra Kalra’s ruling denying Scientology’s motion to strike is on appeal. Appeal fully briefed. Motion to replace Jane Does’ AI-tainted brief denied by court. Awaiting a court hearing date.
— Jane Doe 1 v. Scientology, David Miscavige, and Gavin Potter: Case unsealed and second amended complaint filed. Scientology moves for religious arbitration, gets ruling to depose Jane Doe 1. Trial has been set for January 10, 2028.
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After the success of their double-Emmy-winning, three-season A&E series ‘Scientology and the Aftermath,’ Leah Remini and Mike Rinder continue the conversation on their podcast, ‘Scientology: Fair Game.’ We’ve created a landing page where you can hear all of the episodes so far.
LEAH REMINI: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE AFTERMATH
An episode-by-episode guide to Leah Remini’s three-season, double-Emmy winning series that changed everything for Scientology watching. Originally aired from 2016 to 2019 on the A&E network, and now on Netflix.
SCIENTOLOGY’S CELEBRITIES, from A to Z
Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!
Other links: SCIENTOLOGY BLACK OPS: Tom Cruise and dirty tricks. Scientology’s Ideal Orgs, from one end of the planet to the other. Scientology’s sneaky front groups, spreading the good news about L. Ron Hubbard while pretending to benefit society. Scientology Lit: Books reviewed or excerpted in a weekly series. How many have you read?
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THE WHOLE TRACK
[ONE year ago] Does Shelly Miscavige know it’s Christmas 2024?
[TWO years ago] Does Shelly Miscavige know it’s Christmas 2023?
[THREE years ago] Does Shelly Miscavige know it’s Christmas 2022?
[FOUR years ago] Does Shelly Miscavige know it’s Christmas 2021?
[FIVE years ago] Does Shelly Miscavige know it’s Christmas 2020?
[SIX years ago] Does Shelly Miscavige know it’s Christmas 2019?
[SEVEN years ago] Does Shelly Miscavige know it’s Christmas?
[EIGHT years ago] Thetans roasting on an open fire: It’s Christmas in the Bunker, and we’re full of cheer
[NINE years ago] From those who left, a special Christmas message for Scientology’s remaining members
[TEN years ago] Merry Christmas 2015: Here’s your Scientology present under the tree
[ELEVEN years ago] Scientology’s 2014 in review: May your days be merry and bright!
[TWELVE years ago] Merry Christmas, and here’s your present! From the Underground Bunker, with feeling
[THIRTEEN years ago] Scientology’s 2012 in Review: Eight Days that Shook the World
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Bernie Headley (1952-2019) did not see his daughter Stephanie in his final 5,667 days.
Joe Reaiche (1958-2024) did not see his daughter Alanna Masterson in his final 6,999 days.
Mike Rinder (1955-2025) did not see his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in his final 7,589 days.
Tammy Synovec has not seen her daughter Julia in 3,488 days.
Valerie Haney has not seen her mother Lynne in 3,992 days.
Katrina Reyes has not seen her mother Yelena in 4,498 days
Sylvia Wagner DeWall has not seen her brother Randy in 4,048 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his grandson Leo in 3,038 days.
Klaus Büchele has not seen his daughter Jasmin in 5,424 days.
Geoff Levin has not seen his son Collin and daughter Savannah in 2,919 days.
Christie Collbran has not seen her mother Liz King in 6,223 days.
Marc Headley has not seen his mother Trudy in 4,874 days.
Clarissa Adams has not seen her parents Walter and Irmin Huber in 4,092 days.
Jamie Sorrentini Lugli has not seen her father Irving in 5,646 days.
Quailynn McDaniel has not seen her brother Sean in 4,987 days.
Dylan Gill has not seen his father Russell in 13,558 days.
Melissa Paris has not seen her father Jean-Francois in 9,474 days.
Valeska Paris has not seen her brother Raphael in 5,641 days.
Mirriam Francis has not seen her brother Ben in 5,223 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 5,482 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy and daughter Jessica in 4,234 days.
Marie Poulin has not seen her mother June in 3,799 days.
Julian Wain has not seen his brother Joseph or mother Susan in 2,114 days.
Charley Updegrove has not seen his son Toby in 3,289 days.
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 4,971 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 5,308 days.
Roger Weller has not seen his daughter Alyssa in 10,161 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 5,277 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 3,639 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 4,050 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis in 4,438 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 4,322 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 3,887 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike and daughter Emily in 4,398 days.
Mary Jane Barry has not seen her daughter Samantha in 4,658 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 15,762 days.
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Posted by Tony Ortega on December 25, 2025 at 07:00
E-mail tips to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We also post updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.
Our new book with Paulette Cooper, Battlefield Scientology: Exposing L. Ron Hubbard’s dangerous ‘religion’ is now on sale at Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats. Our book about Paulette, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper, is on sale at Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook versions. We’ve posted photographs of Paulette and scenes from her life at a separate location. Reader Sookie put together a complete index. More information can also be found at the book’s dedicated page.
The Best of the Underground Bunker, 1995-2024 Just starting out here? We’ve picked out the most important stories we’ve covered here at the Underground Bunker (2012-2024), The Village Voice (2008-2012), New Times Los Angeles (1999-2002) and the Phoenix New Times (1995-1999)
Other links: BLOGGING DIANETICS: Reading Scientology’s founding text cover to cover | UP THE BRIDGE: Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists | GETTING OUR ETHICS IN: Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice | SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING: Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts | Shelly Miscavige, 20 years gone | The Lisa McPherson story told in real time | The Cathriona White stories | The Leah Remini ‘Knowledge Reports’ | Hear audio of a Scientology excommunication | Scientology’s little day care of horrors | Whatever happened to Steve Fishman? | Felony charges for Scientology’s drug rehab scam | Why Scientology digs bomb-proof vaults in the desert | PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | The mystery of the richest Scientologist and his wayward sons | Scientology’s shocking mistreatment of the mentally ill | The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ
Watch our short videos that explain Scientology’s controversies in three minutes or less…
Check your whale level at our dedicated page for status updates, or join us at the Underground Bunker’s Facebook discussion group for more frivolity.
Our non-Scientology stories: Robert Burnham Jr., the man who inscribed the universe | Notorious alt-right inspiration Kevin MacDonald and his theories about Jewish DNA | The selling of the “Phoenix Lights” | Astronomer Harlow Shapley‘s FBI file | Sex, spies, and local TV news | Battling Babe-Hounds: Ross Jeffries v. R. Don Steele
Tony Ortega at The Daily Beast
